Freshness: A Love Story
/The idea of freshness is the foundation of Flathead Farmworks. We started out growing vegetables and herbs for restaurants, and continued with flowers. This is part of our story (first published in Comestible, issue 6, fall/winter 2017). Watch my PechaKucha presentation for another take on this story.
Freshness is a connection to memory, taste and a stubborn insistence on the best. It is why I started farming. In today’s modern food system, we are in danger of losing it.
My own experience of freshness goes back to childhood, eating barely pink strawberries because they tasted perfectly ripe to me, and making sandwiches with tomato and sweet onion straight from the garden.
I grew up in the woods of northeastern Washington, on 40 wooded acres between the Columbia River and a range of little mountains. My parents built our house by hand, and we had a large fenced garden to keep out the deer. Something about our sandy soil and hot, dry summers produced the most delicious tomatoes. To this day, my family still talks about those tomatoes and their unmatched flavor. Nostalgia is a strong component of taste.
I consider myself lucky that for the first years of my life, I knew only the taste of fresh, homegrown and homemade foods. The store-bought and packaged items that certainly appeared in our house don’t register in my memories. With the garden, freezer and pantry, as well as bulk items from a natural food supplier and local meats, we ate well.
Eventually we moved to town. We had a large garden, but we also ate store-bought foods and went to restaurants. Even after developing a taste for Baby Ruth candy bars and grape soda, I still loved eating preripe strawberries. Those early flavor memories stayed with me.
In my early 20s I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, for a brief year and started to dabble in gardening. On my condo’s patio I grew a few things in pots, herbs and flowers that didn’t require much space. I wanted something fresh, something I had grown. This was followed by four years in Casper, Wyoming, where I lived in an old brick apartment building. In the tiny fenced backyard I tried to grow flowers and tomatoes, my space to cultivate freshness slowly growing with each move. I wanted that flavor from my memories. I started the tomato seeds in eggshells on a west-facing windowsill and transplanted them outside once it was warm enough (which was probably July, given the harsh climate). Through that windy summer, with many chilly nights and hot, dry days, those poor tomato plants grew achingly slow. I’m sure the soil was terrible, and it didn’t occur to me to fertilize. I tied them gently to whatever I could find to keep them upright against the wind. Finally, in October, the first tomatoes ripened. I think it snowed the following week.
Six years ago, I moved farther north to Kalispell, Montana, in a lush valley between Flathead Lake and Glacier National Park, with a climate similar to my childhood home. After a year renting and gardening in containers, I bought a house on a half-acre with a huge backyard full of weedy lawn, fruit trees, compost piles and a few small garden beds.
A year later, I met my now-husband, Kurt, who happens to be a landscape architect. The first time he came to my house, it was early May and the fruit trees were in bloom. We ate dinner on the porch swing and his dog explored the backyard. Who knows if Kurt was planning our future garden on that first visit, but it soon became clear that he had the energy and vision, and I had the blank slate. Together we started to turn the lawns into gardens, perennial and native flower beds, chicken pasture, paths, and plenty of fences to keep out the neighborhood deer.
We also spent hours in the kitchen cooking together. Our food always tasted better when we used fresh ingredients from the garden. We ate heaps of chard and kale, handfuls of snap peas off the vine, sweet roasted squash, green beans just barely cooked and the most delicious Italian heirloom tomatoes.
The second year of our big garden, when we were producing more than we could eat ourselves, our urban farm business came into being. We now grow vegetables primarily for restaurants, because as cooks we understand the essential quality of freshness as it relates to flavor. For me, gardening is 50 percent hard work and 50 percent pleasure derived from watching something ripen day by day and then eating it at its peak. When Kurt and I talk about freshness, it is more important than almost anything else. A tomato doesn't have to be heirloom or rare to be good; if it is grown naturally and picked when ripe, it will be delicious.
According to a study recently published in the journal Science, researchers have discovered more than 20 unique chemicals and compounds that contribute to the flavor and essence we all know as “tomato.” Over time, to create tomatoes that can be picked early, stored and shipped, and still satisfy consumers, producers have gradually created a tomato that is missing nearly half of those chemicals. One of the researchers compared this modern tomato to a symphony orchestra missing half its instruments; the sound is hollow and at this point barely an orchestra. Hybridization, herbicides and pesticides are another story entirely. What these modern tomatoes are missing are the crucial components of freshness and flavor.
Many people understand that a fresh, homegrown tomato tastes better. That’s why the tomato is at the top of the list for home gardens. Most of us have memories of the best tomato, the sweetest strawberry or the farm fresh egg. We remember grandma’s pies made with fruit from her backyard or a simple sandwich with tomato slices still warm from the sun. That’s why we won’t settle for less. We are trying to get back to that fresh flavor, tasted once and always remembered.
This appreciation of freshness is something we don't want to lose. We can reclaim those memories by growing our own fresh food, even if it’s one tomato plant in a patio container. And with a new generation starting gardens and small-scale farmers growing food for our communities, there are thousands of people relearning the taste of freshness. It tastes sweet and real and irreplaceable.
Seasonal Orzo Salad
This is a mix-and-match recipe. After the base ingredients, select your add-ons. The original recipe had Greek flavors of garlic, lemon, tomato, feta and mint. I have now modified it so many times that the only things it has in common are the orzo, lemon and garlic. Every time it’s different, and every time we say it’s the best orzo salad yet. We eat this salad in the spring, summer and fall, with whatever vegetables and herbs are in season. Canned ingredients can be substituted if necessary. Serves four as a side dish or two as a main dish.
Base Ingredients
1 cup uncooked orzo
2-4 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
Juice and zest of one lemon
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Add-Ons
2 tablespoons chopped fresh herbs - mint, tarragon, parsley, marjoram, dill
1 cup chopped seasonal vegetables - tomatoes, snap peas, sauteed garlic scapes, grilled asparagus, roasted squash
1 cup fresh greens - chard, spinach, kale, pea shoots, arugula
1/2 cup legumes - chickpeas, lupini beans, cannellini beans
1/2 cup cheese - feta, goat cheese, Romano
Meat, if desired - grilled chicken, crumbled bacon, sliced prosciutto
Directions
Cook orzo until al dente. Meanwhile, mix the garlic, lemon juice and zest, olive oil, pepper and salt. Stir or smash together at the bottom of your serving bowl. Add fresh herbs. Prepare the add-ons of your choice.
Drain the cooked orzo and rinse briefly under cold water; while still warm, add to the serving bowl and mix well. Add your chosen vegetables, greens, legumes and cheese, and mix gently. Serve in shallow bowls topped with meat, if desired, and additional fresh herbs and a sprinkle of cheese.
Eat outside.